


the beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair

by narcissablaxk



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series), Karate Kid (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Coming Out, Feelings Realization, M/M, Miscommunication, Mr. Miyagi/Yukie, Senior year LawRusso, Slow Burn, Soulmate AU, Soulmates feel each other's pain/emotions AU, lawrusso
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:07:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28988991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narcissablaxk/pseuds/narcissablaxk
Summary: His name was Johnny Lawrence.His name was Johnny Lawrence and he had a bruise on his lip on the first day of school, a perverse twin to the bruise on Daniel’s eye.The pain in his lip radiated and met the pain in his eye.***The scrawny kid’s name was Daniel LaRusso.He had a shiner like the devil but Johnny could feel it like it had been painted on his skin with gunpowder.Something was wrong.
Relationships: Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence
Comments: 48
Kudos: 177





	1. Chapter 1

When he was young, Daniel’s mother told him he had mood swings. 

He was a happy, energetic child most of the time, quick to laughter and always playing with something. He heard, when he was older, that he exhausted his mother every day when he was a toddler. Something about his boundless energy but agreeable nature made him likeable, if tiring. 

But sometimes his happiness would cloud over, and he would spend hours pouting, or screaming, with no discernible reason. His mother told him later that she assumed it was a typical toddler tantrum. After all, she didn’t have any other children to watch and learn from, and all other mothers complained about the terrible twos. 

Except it didn’t end after he turned three. And even when he was eight, or twelve, or fifteen, he still had moments where a wave of anger or sadness would come over him and he would be powerless to resist. He was yanked along, unceremoniously, by a tide of emotions he couldn’t unravel or understand. When his mother tentatively suggested the idea of mood swings, he happily accepted it. At least the phenomenon had a name. 

***

Johnny Lawrence had a rough childhood. He didn’t really know until later, when his mom married Sid, how difficult his early years had been. He had vague memories of eating a piece of white bread for dinner, his mother tearing off the moldy corner and tossing it away so he couldn’t see, holding his mother’s leg while she cried on the bed that didn’t have a frame. 

But his mother was sunshine, and she made him feel so loved that he didn’t realize that things were hard. She took him to the park and sat with him on a blanket in the grass. She ruffled his hair and kissed the side of his face. It wasn’t until she let the stress get to her that Johnny could see that not all of the smiles on her face were real. 

And he would sit in the corner of their studio apartment and get crushed under wave after wave of sadness that he couldn’t beat back. How was he expected to, if even his mother, the strongest person he knew, couldn’t do it? 

Sometimes a wave of optimism would come over him and he would sit near his mom, holding her hand, with the distinct feeling that everything was going to be fine, even if he had no evidence. She never understood those moments but she always appreciated them.

When he was nine, his mother told him she was afraid he was depressed. Every day he cried, holding tightly onto his pillow, tears and snot and heaving breaths until he was empty, but there was nothing to cry about. They were doing a little better – they had money for food, and every now and then his mother brought him home a new toy or a ball.

Life was the best it had ever been and yet he was crushed under the weight of loss that he couldn’t explain. 

***

Daniel expected more mood swings when he moved to California. There was nothing for him to be happy about, after all. He was leaving his home and his friends behind for a completely new place, unknown and full of everything he didn’t care about – the beach, sunshine, surfing, mountains. He missed New Jersey, missed the cold, the dirty snow, the loud honking. 

But he was steadily unhappy, with no violent swing in any other direction. In fact, he’d been unhappy the week before that, before the move was even really finalized. And then one day he came home and his mother had boxes already packed, her hair pushed back in a headband, and suddenly, the move was no longer theoretical. 

He thought, on the ride over, that his displeasure had been a premonition. 

It didn’t abate while they unpacked, and he was still glowering when Freddy invited him to a beach party that night. Why that kid thought he would make a good friend was a mystery – Daniel could feel his irritation pouring off of him like a stink. Surely, Freddy would feel it and he would be pushed away. 

But Freddy took him to the beach anyway, a monolith of thick, deep sand and warmth that bled into an evening of chilly wind. The beaches on the East Coast weren’t like that…everything seemed shallower there, the water and the sand itself. 

There was a blonde girl sitting with her friends around a bonfire that snuck through the anger. Daniel caught her looking over once, her friend beside her tapping on her shoulder. Blonde curls, a little braid in them, a shy smile. The warmth in his chest managed to sustain itself, and some of the frustration seemed to wither and die. 

“I think that girl has the hots for you,” Freddy told him, nudging him playfully in the shoulder. 

“Yeah, who can blame her, huh?” he replied jokingly, bouncing the soccer ball on his knee before allowing the other boys to steal it away and jogged listlessly down the beach after them. They lost control of the ball and Daniel swooped in to retrieve it, taking his chance to talk to the pretty girl. 

He liked the way she made him feel, a gentle salve on a burn, and even though he still felt angry, still felt hurt somehow, she made him forget it. 

“How do you do that thing with your knee?” she asked when he was just about to ask her what her name was. 

“The what?” 

She took the soccer ball out of his hand and bounced it once on her knee. Oh. 

“I can show you,” he said, and she smiled up at him, blue eyes sparkling with the reflection of the little fire and for a moment, he forgot about his troubling feelings and focused on the soccer ball and the pretty girl. 

***

Johnny didn’t want to come to the beach – Dutch and Tommy had needled at him until he said he would, even Bobby reminding him gently that it might cheer him up. So he put on his Cobra Kai jacket and got on his bike. 

He could tell that some of his friends didn’t understand why he was so angry, or upset, but they didn’t understand what it felt like to break up with someone after two whole years, and after something so stupid. Sure, they’d been fighting in the weeks before, but they always bickered. That was just how they were. But he and Ali still loved each other. It didn’t make sense that missing her birthday was the last straw. 

But she didn’t want to talk to him, so he guessed he would never know. 

When he saw the beach coming into view, he felt a flare of happiness, of curiosity in his chest. Maybe his friends were right – he just needed to go to the beach.

He paused at the top of the hill, a king surveying his kingdom. All of his friends pulled up beside him. 

“Johnny, look at this!” 

He turned and, before he could even ask what he was supposed to be seeing, saw Ali, still the same as when he last saw her, which didn’t seem possible, falling back into the arms of a stranger. 

The hope he felt was promptly squashed under the jealousy that ran through him, hot like a burn, stinging even after he watched Ali pick up the soccer ball and kick it away, far enough that the stranger, in his red sweatshirt and skinny little legs, had to go after it. 

He could barely hear anything over the roaring of the bikes in his ears, buffeted and amplified by his heartbeat. He got off the bike and strode over to Ali, who was trying to pretend not to see him. How mature, he thought with a sneer. 

“Ali,” he said, and when she refused to look up, he kneeled down and turned off her boom box. “Ali.” 

“Hey, what are you doing?” she asked, standing up, looking up at him with her mouth tight. “Turn my radio back on.” 

“Come on, Ali, I just wanna talk,” he said, but he could tell the words were coming out wrong, too angry, too loud. 

“I don’t want to talk to you, Johnny,” she said, crossing her arms. She bent down to turn on the radio. Johnny immediately turned it off again. 

“Come on, Ali, don’t be like that,” he tried to soften his voice, but it didn’t make much of a difference. He could feel something that felt like confusion – where had that come from? 

“Johnny,” Bobby said to his right. “Let’s just go.” 

“Why don’t you take your little Cobra Kais somewhere else?” Ali sneered, her eyes finding the newcomer, who was watching the exchange with interest. “I’m not talking to you.” 

She grabbed her radio, and Johnny took hold of the handle and tried to yank it out of her hand. The stranger stepped up. 

“Hey, come on, man, I don’t think she wants to talk to you,” he said, his accent so unexpected Johnny almost laughed. He looked over at him, huge brown eyes, almost orange with the flames reflected in them, and swallowed. 

“This isn’t any of your business,” he said, and he could hear that the edge had started to leave his voice. “Ali, let’s go.” He pulled insistently on the radio. With her hand still on it, they were as close to holding hands as they’d been in a long time. He tried not to think about it. 

“If I go talk to you, you’ll stop?” she asked. 

“Yeah, I will,” he said, satisfied. 

And then the stranger had to step up and halfway in front of her, like Johnny was someone she needed to be protected from, and tried to take the radio from him. What the hell did he think he was doing, getting in front of Johnny when he was this angry, and when the stranger was that thin, that breakable? 

He almost felt sorry for him when he shoved the radio into his chest and knocked him flat into the sand. 

It wasn’t a hard hit, just overbalance, but Johnny felt a sympathetic pang in his chest anyway. At least, he was pretty sure that’s what it was. 

***

Daniel didn’t know what possessed him to get in front of a guy much larger than him to keep the girl from having to go talk to him. But she looked upset, and he acted on an instinct that he realized, too late, didn’t have his best interests at heart. 

He got up and passed the radio off to one of the girls, holding onto his stomach. It didn’t really hurt, but it gave him the cover to get close enough to punch the blond boy in the face, right below his nose. 

The pain shot through his hand and his face at the same time, like he’d managed to hit himself. He recoiled, almost identical to the blond boy, holding his face. He watched him pull his hand away from his nose, a bit of blood on his index finger. He checked his own hand – no blood. 

The guy was looking at him like he didn’t understand him, and Daniel didn’t either really, and he was so confused that he didn’t even bother to get out of the way of the kick, or the other punch. 

He landed heavy on the sand, and heard the other boy grunt like he’d been hit, too. 

When he looked up, the girls were retreating, Ali’s radio broken, and the blond boy’s friends were helping him up. When had he fallen? 

He caught the other boy’s burning gaze and held it. 

Fear gripped him so tight he thought he might suffocate with it. Fear bled into rage and into sadness and above all, it was all just a big blur of confusion. Still, it was important, whatever he felt, he could tell by the sheer tidal wave of it all. He didn’t blink, didn’t look away from the blue eyes across the sand until the other guys pulled the blue eyes away and he couldn’t see them anymore. 

***

His name was Johnny Lawrence. 

His name was Johnny Lawrence and he had a bruise on his lip on the first day of school, a perverse twin to the bruise on Daniel’s eye. 

The pain in his lip radiated and met the pain in his eye. 

***

The scrawny kid’s name was Daniel LaRusso. 

He had a shiner like the devil but Johnny could feel it like it had been painted on his skin with gunpowder. 

Something was wrong.


	2. Chapter 2

Daniel expected to be gawked at on the first day of school – he was the new kid who looked like the epitome of anti-California, showing up on the first day of the last year of school. All of that added up to a social pariah, or at least someone who got stared at for a while before he made friends. He didn’t expect to have a black eye to add to the intrigue. 

He parked his bike on the rack, trying not to notice how out of place his rusty little six-speed looked compared to all the shiny, unscratched bikes beside it. Small and scrappy, just like him. 

And then he looked up and caught the eye of the blond kid from the night before and his initial feeling was fear, followed swiftly by an anger he didn’t really feel like he owned, and then a frightening level of curiosity that settled on the top of the whole mix and doused everything else. He had averted his eyes, looking back down at the pavement, but now he looked up again, meeting blue eyes and scrutinizing. 

The blond hair was almost white, not golden, on the top, golden underneath, and Daniel was reminded forcibly of perfectly roasted marshmallows and a carefree childhood that felt false. The blue eyes were ice cold, the set of his mouth uncertain more than angry. 

He almost considered walking up and speaking to him, but he was surrounded by guys who were glancing his way like they were waiting for marching orders, and Daniel knew what would happen if he approached. A replay of the night before, multiplied by five. So he ducked his head and went in the other door, the one far away from the whole lot of them, wondering now if he made the right choice or if he should have asserted his dominance. 

He made his way to the front office for his schedule and locker assignment and tried to push the thought out of his mind, even if the curiosity lingered so long he was starting to wonder where it was coming from, and why the well hadn’t run dry yet. 

***

Johnny didn’t understand what was wrong with him. Come to think of it, Bobby and Dutch didn’t know what was wrong with him either. Jimmy and Tommy at least had the tact not to say anything about it – he knew they chalked this whole thing up to being pissed off that Ali dumped him. 

“Hey, there’s that little shit from last night,” Dutch had said when Johnny had already spotted him at the bike rack, looking around like he was insecure. Hell, it was almost like he could feel it, coiling tight in his chest until he was about to explode. He put his hand on his chest and inhaled, feeing the vice around his ribs. It wasn’t right.

“I see him,” Johnny muttered, shrugging off Dutch’s hand on his shoulder. He could feel his friend’s eyes on him, studying his reaction, waiting for a cue. 

Bobby stepped to his other side. “I think you taught him a lesson already,” he said quietly. “No need to overdo it.” 

The kid looked up, as if he felt Johnny’s eyes on him, and Johnny watched him fumble and look away. He was so scrawny, so breakable, but Johnny knew how it felt to take a punch from those bony knuckles. He was begrudgingly impressed, and… _curious._ Who the hell was this kid? Who the hell did he think he was?

He looked up again and this time Johnny caught his gaze and held it, letting his eyes take in the dark black eye, the bruise feeling like it had been pasted onto Johnny’s own face, glowing brown eyes underneath the bruise that pinned him in place, the connection between their gazes lightning, sharp and significant and confusing. The kid swallowed, his throat bobbing obviously with the movement, his skin dark and warm and rich. He ripped his eyes away from Johnny and took in the rest of his friends before he walked away, toward the other set of double doors. 

“Pussy,” Tommy muttered under his breath, and Johnny couldn’t tell who he was talking about.

***

School was boring – Daniel could relax at that notion at least. All of his classes in New Jersey were about on par with the ones in California, so before long, he was free enough to zone out in class, to doodle on the corner of his notebook paper, to pretend he wasn’t across the country.

Before long it was lunch, and Daniel felt like he’d dozed through the whole beginning of the day. He followed the crowd into the cafeteria, eyes trying to find which lunch line was which, where he was supposed to go. There were at least four different lines, all with different shaped stuff, and finally, he got tired of being bumped from behind and picked one, sidling across the line with a tray. 

“Hey, new kid,” he recognized the voice the moment he heard it. The blonde girl from the beach was standing beside him, obviously cutting in front of whoever was behind him, but the guy back there seemed incapable of being angry at her. “Ouch, that looks like it hurts.” She pointed at his black eye. 

“Really, it looks worse than it feels,” Daniel muttered, remembering that he said the same thing to his worried mother that morning. “I’m surprised you’re talking to me, after all that.” 

“Yeah, well, he doesn’t scare me,” she said, tossing a glance over her shoulder. Daniel wanted to look, to follow her eyes, but he resisted. 

“He?” he asked, because he might as well know his name. 

“Johnny Lawrence,” she said, like the name was a disease. “And I’m Ali. With an I.” 

She stuck her hand out, her fingernails painted such a pale pink it was almost white. He shook it. “Yeah? I’m Daniel. With an L.” 

She laughed at his joke and gave him a demure _thank you_ when he paid for her lunch. “Do you wanna come sit with us?” 

“You sure Johnny’s not gonna get mad?” he asked, and his voice came out a little sullen, because he was suddenly irritated, looking at this girl who was being painfully nice while seemingly not even realizing that she was putting him in danger. But he really was grateful for the invitation, no matter how his brain told him he felt, but still, Ali’s smile faltered, and he looked away from it in embarrassment and caught Johnny’s gaze, burning and angry and there it was again, a wave of pure rage that started his hands shaking. 

“Johnny and I broke up weeks ago,” Ali said, marching away, and Daniel followed, trying to tear his eyes away from Johnny. 

“What’s weeks?” Daniel asked, loud enough that he hoped Johnny heard him. Let him hear that Daniel actually cared if he was moving in on another guy’s girl. Maybe that would help. “One week, five weeks?” 

***

“What’s weeks?” Johnny heard the kid say. “One week? Five weeks?” 

_Two_ weeks, Johnny thought angrily. He tore his eyes away from them, settling in at Ali’s usual table, and looked down at his untouched lunch. He picked up his fork and stabbed at the food, pushing it back off the tines with his thumb before doing it again and again. He could feel Bobby’s eyes on his profile, trying to decide whether or not to speak. 

“Johnny?” he asked, and dropped a hand gently on his shoulder. “Do you wanna go out to the soccer field? Skip the next few classes?” 

He felt a surge of affection for his best friend, and heard the new kid laugh. The affection was immediately doused in something that felt like a mixture of sadness and anger. He focused on the anger – he never knew what to do with sadness, not since he was nine years old. 

“Hey, come on, ignore Daniel,” Bobby said. 

“Daniel?” Johnny asked, looking back over at the new kid, who looked vaguely nauseated now. As if he could sense him, Daniel looked up and caught Johnny’s gaze again. It was starting to get annoying, how quickly the kid could sense him. “How do you know his name?” 

“Because I heard someone ask,” Bobby shrugged. “Daniel LaRusso. He’s from Jersey.” 

“Of _course_ he is,” Johnny hissed, even though he didn’t know what he meant by that. “Let’s go to the soccer field.” 

***

Deciding to try out for the soccer team was Daniel’s last-ditch effort to find a group of people who would be obligated to be his friend. He was on the soccer team in Jersey – he was good, and he liked the game. Surely he could make the team here, right? So he put the little mesh shirt on and started drills with everyone else, so focused on the task at hand that he didn’t notice who else was there. 

“I can’t – I won’t,” he heard a few people behind him. “Not with him here.” 

He recognized the voice instantly, even though he’d only heard it one other time. He didn’t look around, too paranoid that he’d catch Johnny looking at him again. He just took a deep breath and got ready for the drill, bouncing on his toes before taking off running. The coach gave him an appreciative thumbs up afterward, and he went to the back of the line feeling confident. 

Except he could see Johnny’s hung head, his drooped shoulders, and his friend, whispering in his ear, from this vantage point, and he didn’t know what they were talking about, but it probably wouldn’t bode well for him. 

He let that idea fester when he shouldn’t – boiling away at a high simmer, the anxiety feeding into the ripple of indignation until Johnny’s friend tackled him, knocking the ball away, and Daniel couldn’t stop himself from getting on top of him and punching him in the face. 

It was all a blur, the gleeful feeling he felt when he hit the ground, the satisfaction that washed over him when he landed his punch, and then the disappointment and fear that followed. He hardly heard the coach tell him that he was done, that he needed to go. 

All he knew was that he punched that kid and felt nothing. So why did he feel it when he hit Johnny? 

He looked up as he was stalking off the field and saw Johnny, standing in another line with his arms crossed, a pleased smirk on his face. Of _course_ this was his idea – of course he was getting his way. Daniel changed his course and shoved his way past Johnny, slamming his bony shoulder into Johnny’s. 

They both stumbled apart as the pain ricocheted between them both. Johnny paused, brow furrowed, smirk cleanly wiped off his face, and stared at him, mouth slightly open. Daniel realized, now that they were standing so close, that he was a few inches shorter, and that the pain of slamming his shoulder into Johnny’s arm was not only at the point of impact but lower, the same spot that Daniel’s shoulder would have landed on Johnny’s arm. 

He could practically hear Johnny’s breathing now, uneven and shallow, and a fist closed around his own lungs. This wasn’t right – it didn’t make any sense. 

But if something really wasn’t right, why wasn’t it happening with everyone? Why was it only him? 

Johnny’s eyes found his and he knew they were thinking the same thing. He didn’t know how he knew, but there was no question. 

“This school sucks,” he mumbled before stumbling off the field to find his bike.

***

He hadn’t intended on going home angry – but the fear had steadily snowballed into anger and then into rage, and by the time he was pulling up to the crappy little apartment he had to call home, Daniel was irrationally angry – so furious and frightened that he could tell he was nearly out of his mind. 

He swung his fist and then his elbow into the wall behind the apartments, where no one could see him, and felt frustrated tears leak out of his eyes. It burned, like a match on his bruise, but once they started, he couldn’t stop them. 

Every explanation he had for what was happening made no sense. He’d read about stuff like this in comic books, or seen it on a bad B-movie late at night when he was supposed to be asleep. All of it was clearly fictional, and way more amazing than whatever was happening. 

A door he hadn’t noticed before slid open and the handyman from a couple of days ago, Mr. Miyagi, stuck his head out. His brown eyes took in Daniel’s disheveled appearance, the bruise on his face and his hands, and went back up to his face. 

“Oh, Mr. Miyagi, I’m sorry,” Daniel mumbled, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “I didn’t mean to –”

“Better come inside,” Mr. Miyagi interrupted. “I make tea.” 

Daniel didn’t want tea, not really, but he followed him inside anyway. The little apartment was shaped almost like a studio, with a bed in one corner and a shelf of books beside it, a little half-kitchen in one corner. Mr. Miyagi went straight to the kitchen and took out another cup, pouring some steaming water into it, dropping a tea bag in after. 

Watching him work was soothing – Daniel could feel the tumult in his chest start to dissipate the longer he watched. Before long, Mr. Miyagi was passing Daniel a little cup without a handle – Daniel mimicked his hold, one hand around the cup and one underneath, and moved toward the little shelf of books. 

“What wrong?” Mr. Miyagi asked when Daniel had been silent for too long. Daniel didn’t hesitate in telling him the story – he certainly wasn’t going to tell his mother, not as long as the story was riddled with times that Daniel had gotten punched or thrown a punch in return. 

Mr. Miyagi listened with a worried crease in his brow when Daniel mentioned feeling the pain that he inflicted on Johnny, his hand around his tea cup loosening enough that he had to jerk to keep the tea cup in his grip. Daniel figured that wasn’t a good sign. 

He explained the soccer tryouts, the memory a little less scary when he was telling it rather than living it, and Mr. Miyagi set down the tea cup and walked past Daniel to a bookshelf, where he pulled a book down and passed it to him. It was in Japanese. He turned it over, hoping to find something he understood on the back. 

He looked up at Mr. Miyagi, who was looking at him like he knew him, like they were friends. 

“Mr. Miyagi, this is – I can’t read this,” he said, handing it back. 

Mr. Miyagi didn’t take it. “It say _Soulmates_ ,” he said, running his fingers over the embossed cover. The spine of the book was cracked in several places, but the cover was still immaculate. 

“Soulmates?” Daniel asked with a laugh. “Okay.” What did that have to do with him? “Look, if this is some kind of wisdom, I don’t think I get it.” 

Mr. Miyagi tapped the cover again. 

“Do you think they’re real?” Daniel asked, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. 

Mr. Miyagi smiled sadly up at him. “Miyagi have soulmate.” 

“Really?” Daniel asked. “Where is she? How long have you been married?” He glanced around the space. There was no way another person lived in here with him, right?

Mr. Miyagi shook his head. “Not married.” 

“So how do you know she’s your soulmate?” Daniel asked. 

“Because,” Mr. Miyagi said, tapping the book. “I feel her pain.” 

It felt suddenly like the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. Daniel swayed on his feet, eyes falling down to the book again. “I don’t understand.” 

“True soulmate very, very rare,” Mr. Miyagi said. “But you feel pain.” 

There was something in that statement that dug way deeper than the sentence alone. Daniel opened the book, as if the words inside would be written in English, like he would be able to understand. But it wasn’t – he was still lost, even more confused. 

It didn’t make sense – saying that soulmates existed was like crawling out of a science fiction book, but Mr. Miyagi was looking so plainly at him, and Daniel knew, without a doubt, that Mr. Miyagi wasn’t lying, that he wasn’t capable of playing a joke on him, and the book was right here, it had been read multiple times, and Daniel was starting to tremble. 

This explained too much and didn’t explain anything at all.

“I find book in English,” Mr. Miyagi said, taking the book back, his warm hand closing over Daniel’s clammy one. “It help.” 

“So – you think – you’re saying –” the words were coming out wrong, jumbled and tossed around in his mouth and falling flat on the floor with no meaning. “That – he is –”

Mr. Miyagi just gave him a knowing look that Daniel would remember forever, and then took his tea so Daniel could vomit on the floor. 

***

Johnny collapsed into the couch in the den, feeling suddenly sick to his stomach. He rubbed his hand over his knuckles and his elbow, suddenly sore for some reason. He swallowed carefully, breathing through his nose. His mother was at the other end of the sofa, reading a self-help book that Johnny couldn’t bother to remember the title of. She looked up at the sound of his breath and gave him a sympathetic look. 

“Are you alright?” she asked, patting his bare foot with her hand. 

“Ali and I broke up,” he blurted. His mom had been looking down at her book again but she looked up at the sound of his voice. “Two weeks ago.” 

“Oh, honey,” she said, closing the book without marking the page. “I’m so sorry.” 

He shrugged, the way he always did when people apologized to him. It didn’t mean much to him, exactly, and it wasn’t like he felt like he earned their apology. “There’s a new kid at school that she’s hanging out with already,” he said, an angry edge sneaking into his voice. “Daniel LaRusso.” 

His name sent something up his spine, but he ignored it. 

“That must be hard, to see her like that,” his mom said sympathetically. “But it’ll get easier.” 

“He’s so annoying, Mom, and he –” the nausea washed over him again and he sat up hurriedly, trying to decide if he was going to throw up or not. “He just….there’s something about him.” 

“Something bad or something good?” she asked. 

He opened his mouth to point out that it would always be bad, especially when this new kid was moving in on his girl, but Sid was stomping into the room, muttering something about Johnny leaving his stuff all over the house. He had Johnny’s cleats in his hand and shoved them, hard, into Johnny’s gut when he stood up. 

Johnny doubled over, trying not to cough, and listened to his mom distantly asking Sid to be more considerate, as if that would work. 

***

Daniel, sitting on Mr. Miyagi’s little bed, bent over and struggled to breathe against the pain in his stomach. 

Mr. Miyagi sighed and looked away, worry pinching his brow.


	3. Chapter 3

The next day dawned like everything was alright, which seemed to Johnny like a cruel joke. He stared at the ceiling of his room for a few minutes, the beeping of his alarm playing unabated, and tried to reason out how he felt. He could feel the soreness of where Sid had pushed his cleats into his stomach; a pain in his eye that hadn’t gone away yet; he could feel a sloshing in his stomach that he always associated with the few minutes before he vomited. 

He had felt it the day before, while he was sitting on the couch with his mom, but it had done nothing but emulsify overnight, simmering in his guts until he was forced into waking up. 

It was easy to tell his mom he was going to stay home from school today. He must have looked as sick as he felt, because she petted his hair off of his sweaty forehead and sat with him for a while, watching his visage for clues, gently asking him where it hurt and why it might hurt. When he drifted off to sleep again, he felt her get up and leave, and when she came back, she brought him hot lemon water, their go-to cheap remedy when he got sick as a kid, and some dry toast to eat. 

When she wasn’t in the room, Johnny’s mind capitalized on the opportunity to replay Daniel LaRusso’s shoulder slamming into his arm at soccer tryouts on a loop, the impact and then the way Daniel looked at him afterward, like he was coming to a terrible realization that Johnny could almost understand if he only looked at him long enough. 

But he never did. In every replay, Daniel tore his eyes away right before everything came together, and in the aftermath, Johnny knew nothing but pain in several parts of his body, and a deep pit of foreboding in his stomach.

***

Daniel was grateful for an early shift that took his mother out of the house before he had to rise from his bed. He didn’t want to explain to her why he felt pale and sick, and why it was impossible for him to focus on anything except what Mr. Miyagi told him the day before. He could still picture the book, like he was holding it in his hands, like the characters were ones he understood. 

He rode to school in a haze, traversing the short bike ride without seeing it, hooking up his bike to the rack without really seeing it. 

His eyes searched the soccer field, where the last bits of tryouts were wrapping up. Surely Johnny was out there, right? 

Except he didn’t see his blond head, and when the group started walking back to the locker rooms, the group of Johnny’s friends was obviously leaderless. He bit his lip and went to his locker, where he missed his combination three times before he elbowed the damn thing and leaned his forehead against it. 

It was harder than usual to keep his frustration in check – even harder when he still felt underlying nausea. He couldn’t shake the feeling of unreality, like ever since Mr. Miyagi mentioned the word soulmates, the world he was in had separated from the one he knew and now he had to renavigate everything. How was he supposed to walk up to a guy who had punched him in the face and try to explain the concept of soulmates, much less that they were supposed to be soulmates themselves? 

It was the most complicated way Daniel had ever asked for a beating, but he trusted Mr. Miyagi – at least, he trusted the way his face went a little waxy when Daniel talked about Johnny. He believed that someone he didn’t really know wouldn’t lie to him like that, and certainly he wouldn’t be a good enough actor to pull off a prank like that. 

No, it rang too true, and it rattled through his bones like his body already knew it. 

“Hey,” Ali’s voice startled him out of his reverie and he jumped, taking a step away from his still closed locker. “You okay?” 

He shrugged one shoulder and went back to trying to unlock it, knowing that with an audience, he was more likely to succeed. “Yeah, I’m fine, I’m just…I’m just tired.” 

She looked at him like she didn’t really believe him, and watched his shaky hands on the lock. “You look…”

“You can say I look terrible,” Daniel remarked as he triumphantly pulled his locker open. “I won’t be offended.” 

“I was going to say pale.” 

He nodded. “I feel pale.” 

She put a warm hand on his shoulder. “Maybe you should go to the nurse,” she said bracingly, and he felt a rush of genuine affection for her, for this girl he barely knew, who was looking at him with such concern and care. “I can take you.” 

He pursed his lips and shut his locker, a new book in his backpack for his trouble. “I think I’ll be okay,” he reassured her. “Do you…I mean…have you seen Johnny today?” 

“Johnny?” she actually recoiled away from his name, as if Daniel was using it as a weapon. “Why are you looking for Johnny?” 

“I – it’s – nothing, just I had a question about soccer,” he stammered. He hadn’t considered that he needed an excuse, but of course looking for Johnny sounded bizarre. Shouldn’t he be eating lunch with teachers to avoid him? 

She squinted at him like she didn’t believe it. “He’s not here,” she said finally. “Jimmy said he stayed home sick.” 

“Did he?” Daniel asked, the room spinning around him. “You know what, I think I am going to go see the nurse.” 

“I can take you –”

“No,” he said hurriedly, laying his hand on her arm. “I…uh…I know where it is.” 

She was looking at him like he was sprouting a second head, and he couldn’t really blame her. “Let me know if you need anything,” she said slowly, like she couldn’t figure out how to navigate the conversation anymore. 

“I do need something, actually,” he said. “I need to know where Johnny Lawrence lives.” 

He ended up spending half of the day in the nurse’s office, the poor woman offering him ginger ale and crackers and a temperature check, all to no avail. After a while, she simply left him alone, her eyes darting over to him, curled up on the hard cot in the corner, staring up at the ceiling. He did feel a little less awful now, when he was away from sound, and people. 

He had Johnny’s address written on a torn piece of paper, clutched in his fist. He tried not to think about how Ali had looked at him, worry creasing the space between her eyebrows as she wrote it. How she flinched when he brushed off her attempts at figuring out why he wanted it in the first place. What was he supposed to tell her? 

She wouldn’t understand – he didn’t even understand. And he certainly wasn’t going to tell her before he told Johnny. 

It was bizarre, how Mr. Miyagi’s explanation made Daniel feel like he owed Johnny something. He didn’t even know him. 

The nurse ushered him out of the room after lunch, saying that he had to attend some classes today or call his mom to take him home sick. So he took a pack of crackers and pulled on his backpack, ready to shuffle off to whatever class he had next. 

He scanned the hallways for Johnny, as if Ali’s intel had been incorrect somehow, and came up empty. She spotted him from outside her trig class and gave him a tentative wave, but her smile didn’t really reach her eyes. 

He wondered what she thought of him now. 

He didn’t have long to think, because Johnny’s bleach blond crony was suddenly coming up out of nowhere, the _Jaws_ theme song playing in Daniel’s head, and shoving him bodily into the row of lockers. His back landed on a protruding lock and he winced, sliding down a few inches before Ali swooped in and scooped him up, giving the blond kid the middle finger. He clutched onto her arm and tried to forget the way she had just been looking at him across the hallway.

***

Johnny managed to get himself out of bed after lunch, trudging down the stairs to the kitchen for something to eat, his stomach finally protesting his only contribution (one slice of dry toast). His mom was asleep on the couch, her foot hanging off one end, so he crept down the stairs as quietly as he could to let her sleep. 

And then an icepick of pain sliced through his back and shoulder and he hissed, sliding down the wall of the stairs until he was just sitting there, trying to wiggle the pain out, trying to reach his back to see what the hell was going on. Had something stung him? There had to be a reason, a physical indication of pain that he could grasp and hold onto. 

But there was nothing there – no bug, no bee, no projectile thrown by some unseen force. There was nothing but a round beacon of ache on his back, and a lingering feeling of dread. 

***

Daniel let Ali walk him to the bike rack when school was over. She didn’t speak until he was unlocking the chain he’d left around it, her hands fidgeting in front of her chest. 

“Are you okay?” she asked. “I know…I don’t know you very well –”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he reassured her, but she pinched her mouth like she didn’t believe him. “I just –”

“Why do you want to know where Johnny lives?” she asked. “Don’t go and pick a fight with him, Daniel –”

“I just want to talk to him,” Daniel said, a little peeved now. He’d been shoved and beaten at the hands of his guy but he throws one punch and suddenly he’s going to pick a fight? “I’m not going to fight him.” 

“He has enough going on at home, alright –”

“Wait, whoa, I don’t know about any of that,” Daniel interrupted, putting his hands firmly on his bike. “I’m not going to fight him. I just want to talk, that’s it. I swear.” 

Ali crossed her arms, her mouth still tense like she was troubled. “Just…make sure his step-dad isn’t there, will you? Just in case.” She put her hand on Daniel’s arm for a moment before stepping away. “And…don’t tell him I said anything.” 

“Right, yeah,” Daniel said, looking down at the spot on his arm that she’d touched. He heard her retreat, back toward the school, toward her friends. He walked his bike home rather than rode it – he didn’t want to accidentally come across Johnny’s friends, who could clearly cause trouble without their ringleader present. 

Maybe he wouldn’t have to go to Johnny’s house after all. Maybe he could just talk to Mr. Miyagi some more and then see him at school the next day. He didn’t need to complicate things by showing up to his house. That would be an invitation for another ass kicking, not that he needed to issue one. 

He knocked on the door to Mr. Miyagi’s workshop and leaned his bike against the outside of the building. He hadn’t seen Mr. Miyagi’s work truck when he’d come in, but he was pretty sure the man was always here. He had a bed in there, after all. 

But no one answered. He knocked a second time, and then a third, before he had to admit that Mr. Miyagi simply wasn’t home. 

He pulled his bike up the steps to his apartment, frustrated tears stinging his eyes. He wasn’t used to feeling so bottled up – when he had something to say, he said it. Sometimes his audience wasn’t the best, but once it was out, he didn’t have to carry it around anymore. Carrying around something that felt so heavy it had to be given to the right person was exhausting, and painful, and he was already so tired. 

“Daniel? Hey honey, how was your day?” 

He’d forgotten his mother had an early shift, which meant she’d be home earlier than usual. She was just sitting on the couch, her bare feet up on the coffee table, watching the little tv across the room. He shrugged and didn’t answer her – but she had mother instincts that rivaled a wild animal, so he barely made it past the kitchen before she was standing up and walking over. 

“What’s wrong, baby?” she asked, smoothing his hair down. “Come on, Daniel, come sit down, talk to me, what’s going on?” 

“Nothing, Ma –”

“I don’t believe that for a second, come on, we can talk, it’s okay –”

The frustrated tears were stinging his black eye, running the tears down his cheek faster than usual, faster than he could hide them, and he let his mom push him toward the couch, her hands tender and soft. He waited until she sat down and dropped his head to her shoulder so she couldn’t see him cry. 

“Ma…” he said quietly, trying to decide what to say. “Do you know about soulmates?” 

He felt her still beside him. She didn’t say anything for a long time, and when she did, it was almost a whisper. He didn’t think he’d ever heard his mom talk so softly before. 

“Why?” 

It was a knowing question, and Daniel pulled away from her shoulder to look at the side of her face more completely. She was looking straight ahead at the television, but he could see the way her chin quivered. 

“Ma…” he said. “I think –”

“No, baby,” she said, like a demand. “No, it can’t get you, too.” 

“Get me?” he repeated. “What do you know? Ma?” 

She pushed herself off the couch and walked to the little two shelves that held up the television. Underneath it was a thin drawer. She reached inside and pulled out a familiar book. She passed it over to him and he read in English the word that Mr. Miyagi had translated for him. 

Soulmates. 

“It’s very rare, sweetie,” she said, wiping away a tear like she could hide it. “And it keeps getting rarer.” 

“You?” he asked, his mouth so dry he couldn’t form more than one word. 

“And your father, yes,” his mom said, sitting down beside him. “We were very lucky. We were close, geographically, and we had time together. But many people aren’t lucky like us, honey.” She flipped open the book and pulled out a creased photo of his father, hugging her around the waist. Daniel had seen this picture before – his father kept it in his wallet, and his mom kept one on her bedside table. 

“You share pain,” she said, her fingers tracing the edge of the yellowed picture. “So when one of you is sick…” 

His chest hurt so badly he thought he might crack in half. “Ma –”

“No, honey, don’t you see?” she asked. “It’s a miracle, to be able to feel that much, to understand each other so well. People would kill for a connection like that. We want nothing more than to be completely seen and understood. And if you have a soulmate, then you can have that.” 

He wiped away one of the tears that snuck out, his other hand holding tightly to his mother’s. “And what happens when…?” 

“When you die?” she finished for him. “The emptiness hurts more than any pain.” 

“I’m sorry,” he didn’t know what else to say – his mother looked down at him with a wan smile, her eyes still watery. “I’m so sorry, Ma.” 

“I had hoped it would skip you,” she said softly. “Maybe that’s selfish.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I understand.” 

She hugged him tightly, kissing the top of his head. “So, who is she?” she asked. “Is she nice, at least?” 

Daniel winced, pulling away from her hug. He still hadn’t told Johnny anything yet – was it right to talk about him to anyone else, even his own mother? Or did he deserve to hear it before anyone else? 

But what if Mr. Miyagi was wrong? 

No, he wasn’t – Daniel knew that with a pained certainty that he’d rarely felt. He wanted Mr. Miyagi to be wrong, but he wasn’t. 

“He’s the one who gave me this,” he said, motioning to the bruise on his face. 

His mom looked down at him, her brows furrowed. “He – he hurt you?” 

“I mean…just the once,” Daniel hedged. “When we met.” 

“Does he know?” she asked. “Have you told him?” 

He shook his head. “I haven’t figured out…I hoped it wasn’t true.” 

“But you know it is,” she said. “Right?” 

***

It took him too long to get back up from the stairs, and when he did, his appetite had mostly waned. He stood, unmoored, in the middle of the kitchen, unsure of what to do, before he grabbed a half-eaten bag of chips and retreated back to his room before Sid came home. He stared at the wall with his headphones on, music turned up loud, and tried to think about nothing. 

He didn’t know how much time he spent staring up at the ceiling, just that the tape had ended and his mom was opening the door and saying someone was looking for him. 

“Bobby?” he asked, sitting up. Leave it to Bobby to bring him his missed classwork. 

His mom shook her head. “No, none of your friends,” she said. “I’ve never seen him before.” 

Johnny frowned and sat up, feeling a roiling in his gut that he couldn’t explain. Like he was nervous for something, but there was nothing to be nervous of, was there? He went down the stairs, trying to focus on his breathing, in through his nose, out through his mouth, to keep his stomach settled. 

When he was younger, he had what his mom called an anxiety attack at school. He’d been getting bullied by the bigger kids – and one of them had shoved him so hard into the trash can that he twisted his ankle and couldn’t ride his bike for weeks. When he saw that kid coming down the hallway, he felt the walls close in on him, and he felt like his body had forgotten how to breathe. 

He ran down the hall to a classroom and hid under the desks until a teacher found him, gasping for breath, his hands so tight around his knees the knuckles were white. 

He felt like he was walking that line now, the edges of the front door blurry and unsteady. 

He opened the front door and Daniel LaRusso was standing on the other side, pale and drawn, a book clutched in his arms. 

“LaRusso?” 

“We have to talk.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for violence, discussion of mental illness, people generally not understanding what bipolar disorder is, mention of substance and alcohol abuse.

Johnny blinked past the sunlight of the late afternoon, trying to focus his gaze on Daniel LaRusso, standing on his doorstep, slightly sweaty and clutching a book close to his chest. His anxiety compounded just looking at him, and the world seemed to be tilting slowly on its axis, threatening to throw him off. LaRusso looked a little disoriented, too, his eyes blinking slowly and then narrowing, as if he couldn’t quite decide what to look at. 

“Came all the way here for a talk?” Johnny finally asked. It was easy to act like Daniel came here for a fight. “Long bike ride.” 

Daniel held out the book, shaking it slightly when Johnny didn’t immediately take it. “Here,” he said. “Take a look at this.” 

He still left Daniel holding it out. He didn’t want to touch him, didn’t want any contact with him. Who knew what would happen, after the fight at the beach and that shoulder check at soccer tryouts. He didn’t know what kind of weird shit was going on, but he certainly wasn’t going to invite more of it. 

“Aren’t you curious?” Daniel asked, taking the book back. “About why –”

“No,” Johnny said firmly. _Liar_. “No, I’m not, LaRusso, and you better go before my step-dad gets home.” 

“I know you felt it,” Daniel plowed forward like Johnny hadn’t spoken, and _Jesus Christ_ this kid was irritating, Johnny could feel it crawling beneath his skin. His stupid accent, the patient way he was talking, like Johnny was stupid and needed things explained to him. “When you hit me.” 

“You deserved it,” he mumbled, shifting on his feet. 

Daniel rolled his eyes. “Whatever,” he said. “That’s not important. This is.” 

He offered the book again, more insistently this time, and his hand slipped off the title so Johnny could clearly see it. _Soulmates._

“What the fuck is this?” he asked, shoving the book away. “Why are you here, LaRusso? Is this some sort of fucked up revenge? Showing up at my door, acting all weird? That how they do things in Jersey?” 

“Just look at the book,” Daniel insisted, maddeningly patient, but Johnny could hear that he was starting to get under his skin, starting to make headway. “It’s important.” He sighed. “We can share pain, Johnny, can’t you see? That’s why it hurt you when you hit me –”

He stepped forward and tried to put the book in Johnny’s hands, not forceful but certainly not gently, and Johnny reacted instinctively – he dodged Daniel’s hands and shoved, hard, harder than he meant to, and felt the phantom hands on his own chest (no, he couldn’t think about that now), and then Daniel was falling, stumbling backward down the steps up to the porch, and the next thing Johnny felt, besides the guilt, was a white hot flash of pain across the back of his head. 

It rattled his vision – he felt like he couldn’t breathe for a second, couldn’t do anything. He swayed on his feet and had to lower himself to the ground, feeling blindly behind him for the door. What the hell was going on? He shook his head, the pain in the back of his skull so forceful he couldn’t think of anything else, and blinked to put things in focus. 

And then he saw Daniel, lying in a heap at the bottom of the three steps, the book left behind. His eyes were closed. 

“Shit,” Johnny muttered, and forced himself to get up. He had to feel his way toward him, the pain too consuming to do much else. “Come on, LaRusso, don’t,” he didn’t even know what he was telling him not to do, but the kid’s eyes stayed closed, his breathing deep and even. 

A vice closed around Johnny’s windpipe and he heaved a breath through his mouth, trying to fill his lungs. Nothing happened. He only felt like everything in his body was withering away, falling apart. He reached out and touched Daniel’s shoulder, shook him lightly. Nothing happened, and the urge to breathe doubled him over and then he was crying, holding onto Daniel’s shoulders, pulling him so his head was pillowed on his leg, his eyes still painfully closed. 

He felt, suddenly, empty – the pain in the back of his head faded and became nothing but a weird, second heartbeat, and nothing else existed except the unreal feeling of floating, like he was finally going to pass out from a lack of oxygen. He hadn’t felt empty like this – _ever_ – in his life. It was surreal, and not at all peaceful like he’d imagined. It ached, like everything had been scraped out of him and he was left behind to deal with it. 

He wanted to scream – he didn’t understand what was happening or how to make it stop. First it was too much, and now, it wasn’t enough. He remembered Daniel’s words as he offered the book: _We can share pain, Johnny, can’t you see?_

He heard a groan and felt Daniel’s body shift on the ground, and suddenly, everything was back, hitting him like a freight train. The pain in his head came back, and his vision went blurry again. 

“Johnny?” his voice was so quiet, so confused, that Johnny had to look up and away from him to escape it, and even then, the sound seemed to bury itself in his head, repeating on a loop. 

He didn’t apologize – he couldn’t hear anything other than his heartbeat in his own ears and the sound of Daniel’s voice. He stood up, and Daniel tried to follow, but Johnny could feel how dizzy he was, and he offered him an arm before he could fall. 

“You pushed me,” he said quietly, and whatever guilt Johnny had managed to contain spread through him like a poison. 

“Yeah,” he muttered, the apology bubbling up in his throat. He swallowed it down again, and caught Daniel looking up at him with huge brown eyes, wounded. 

“You feel guilty,” he said, like it was obvious. “I didn’t expect that.” 

“Johnny – oh, are you alright?” His mother trotted down the steps to take Daniel’s other arm, and Daniel blinked at her like he didn’t know who she was, even though she was the one who answered the door. “What happened?” 

“I –”

“I tripped,” Daniel said, with a sheepish shrug that even Johnny almost bought. “Clumsy me.” 

He said it like it was a joke but Johnny could still feel the pain, could feel how hard he was trying to stay standing. It ached through his body, and for a moment, he wished he could take it away from Daniel and feel it completely. It would serve him right, after all. 

“Come on, sweetie, I’ll drive you home,” Laura said, and once she saw that Johnny had a firm grip on him, moved to pick up the abandoned book on the stoop. “ _Soulmates_? Heavy reading,” she laughed, like it was a joke, but no one laughed with her. “Daniel, wasn’t it?” she asked. 

“Yeah,” he said, and his voice was scratchy, and Johnny understood the feeling. 

“Well, come on,” she said. “Let me go back inside and grab my keys. John, help him to the car, would you?” 

“My bike –”

“I’ll hook it up,” Johnny muttered, still holding Daniel by the arm, giving up on his tenuous grip and sliding an arm underneath both of Daniel’s, a physical buoy that Daniel leaned heavily on. “Just sit down first.” 

He waded through the weird disorientation to take Daniel to the car, taking the time to actually look at him. He was such a scrawny thing, so light Johnny could barely feel him leaning into him, except for the burning warmth of his body, like a tiny little space heater. It amazed him, now that he saw how little he was, that the kid managed to make his nose bleed at all. But his hands were bony, tan and lithe and almost feminine, and one of them was curled around Johnny’s wrist. 

“You smell like a plant,” he said after a long silence. 

“Gee, thanks,” Daniel deadpanned. “Look, I want you to keep that book, okay?” he said, and he said it fast, like he was trying to get it out before Johnny’s mom came back. “Read it.” 

“Why?” he didn’t know why he asked, but the word slipped out before he could stop it. 

He lowered Daniel into the front seat, pulling back to see his face. His eyes were wide and still a little unfocused, but they were reflecting gold in the falling sunlight, his skin smooth and tan. He pursed his lips (feminine, like his hands) and glared at him. 

“You know why,” he said. 

Johnny didn’t know what to say to that, so he carefully shut the car door and went to get Daniel’s discarded bike. It was well-worn, and Johnny tried not to inspect it too closely on his way back to the car. It was easy to strap it to the top, like he did with his surfboard sometimes. By the time he was done, his mom was in the front seat and talking to Daniel, who seemed a little more focused. 

He tried not to feel too relieved, but he knew he didn’t succeed when Daniel turned in the seat to look at him, eyebrows raised. 

“I always thought that whole soulmates thing was an urban legend,” Johnny’s mom was saying when she started the car, Johnny buckled in the backseat. He wondered, wildly, what they would do if he got out. “But it’s real?” 

“My mom and my dad were soulmates,” Daniel explained. “She said it’s getting rarer, which is why people don’t hear about them as often. And a lot of people don’t even get to meet theirs, so there are probably more out there that don’t even know it.” 

“And so soulmates –”

“Well, I just started doing research,” Daniel said, “but from what I’ve seen, they share pain, strong emotions. A lot of them are misdiagnosed with personality disorders when they’re young, like bipolar disorder, because they don’t realize that they’re feeling someone else’s feelings.” 

“It’s so funny you say that,” Johnny’s mom said, turning down the radio as a song ended. “I used to think Johnny was going to be bipolar, when he was young. He spent an entire year crying for no reason, I was so worried –”

“Mom –”

“What?” she asked, looking at him in the rear view mirror. “It’s not like you were dealing with a soulmate issue, honey. You haven’t had those mood swings in years.” 

“How old were you?” Daniel asked over the seat, and Johnny could see something sad in his eyes. He almost didn’t answer. 

“Nine.” 

Daniel just nodded once and turned away, but Johnny could see that he’d answered an unknown question correctly just by the way his shoulders slumped. He suddenly felt a wave of intense sadness, so obvious and painful that he had to look out the window and focus on his breathing. He wanted to ask, but Daniel had passed off this whole soulmate bullshit as some kind of research topic, and he didn’t want to seem too interested. 

“I knew a girl in San Francisco who had a soulmate,” his mom said into the silence. 

He felt rather than saw Daniel perk up. “You did?” he asked. “How was it?” 

His mother shrugged. “They were soulmates but he had…you know, issues. So they were always fighting. They didn’t need to, you know, they were soulmates, but they just kept doing it. Kept hurting each other. It took him a long time to stop picking fights and start accepting her. She was really miserable for a while.” 

Johnny watched Daniel look out the window again, and felt what Daniel’s body language was clearly communicating – he thought Johnny was going to be that way. 

“I didn’t know soulmates would fight like that,” Daniel said, so softly that Johnny felt an ache in his chest. “For so long, at least.” 

“I’m sure it’s a hard adjustment,” his mom said serenely. “I would love to experience it, but I’m a little glad I haven’t.” 

“Yeah,” Daniel muttered, and didn’t say anything else for the rest of the drive. 

***

Johnny walked him to his door, carefully helping him up the steps with one hand and holding the bike in the other. Daniel tried to ignore how warm his hand was on his arm, how gently he was holding him. He could still feel Johnny’s guilt, and his anguish, but he didn’t know how to make it go away – not without making it worse first. He didn’t know how long it would take Johnny to admit what he already knew. 

He hoped the book he asked him to keep would help. 

“You probably shouldn’t go to sleep for a while,” Johnny said quietly when they got to the top of the steps. “Just in case you have a concussion.” 

He still hadn’t apologized out loud, but Daniel could feel it in the press of his hand, in the gentle way he spoke. “Right, okay.” He stood by the front door as Johnny released him, and noted the red around his eyes. Remnants of tears he didn’t remember seeing Johnny shed. 

“How did it feel?” he asked. “While I was unconscious.” 

Johnny shivered, and Daniel felt the nausea come back in a sudden wave. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. 

“Right,” Daniel said flatly. Johnny wouldn’t know how it felt, would he, not if he refused to acknowledge the connection at all. “Tell your mom thanks for the ride.” 

Johnny didn’t answer, but fidgeted with his hands while Daniel opened the front door. He was almost inside when Johnny’s voice called him back. 

“Empty,” he said. “It felt empty.” 

***

It was easy to stay up after Johnny was gone. Daniel couldn’t forget the way his eyes landed on Daniel’s when he said _empty_ , like it was causing him great pain that Daniel just didn’t understand except he _did_ understand, because he could feel the shadow of the feeling when Johnny mentioned it, like it had been processed and locked away for his sake.

Johnny made sure he got inside before he shut the door, everything about his poised, taut body language screaming that he was holding something back, and Daniel wished he could say the right thing to get him to speak, but then Johnny was gone, and he was alone. 

Mr. Miyagi came by for dinner, leaving Daniel a copy of the _Soulmates_ book behind, and Daniel remembered that he hadn’t gotten to tell him that his mom had a copy after all, so he took it to his room and opened it to read. 

He was only scanning, looking for bits that would explain things about himself that he never fully understood, turning page after page aimlessly until a word caught his eye. Childhood. 

He’d read part of this before – the mention that children were often misdiagnosed because they could not process the feelings of two people at once when they were so young. 

_This connection is most fraught during childhood; children do not have the capability to process the feelings of two people, as they are only learning to process their own feelings. Soulmate connection may make children feel confused, and they are more likely to act out in childhood and adolescence. Confusion breeds violence._

_As children, the soulmates can feel every emotion, and every nuance of the emotion. The same way that people without soulmates feel emotions more acutely as children than as adults, children with a soulmate connection will often feel overwhelmed. Some of them may suffer from bouts of depression, or anxiety. This is common and can be treated._

Daniel flipped forward a few more pages, feeling a sharp sting of understanding, and then stopped. 

_Many adults with a soulmate connection report that as they age, the feeling of sharing emotions starts to ebb, and instead, what they feel is shared pain. Because adults are better at processing complex emotion, soulmates do not often share emotions once they are past puberty. Of course, adults with a soulmate connection who have not discovered that they have a soulmate might have more trouble with emotion processing._

_The key to handling a soulmate connection is knowledge. Knowing what is occurring, knowing your soulmate, understanding them. Refusal to do so, or inability to do so, can result in deep emotional issues that may present as more damaging personality traits, such as alcoholism and drug and substance abuse._

Quickly, he flipped another chunk of pages.

_Once two adult soulmates become more attuned to each other, they can begin to feel their soulmates emotions again. This is a sign of a strong connection and understanding, and is very rare. With communication and understanding, the soulmates will begin to be able to differentiate between their emotions and pain and their soulmate’s._

_This is the healthiest soulmate connection and one that takes considerable work to achieve._

Well, that didn’t make him feel particularly optimistic – he flipped to the front of the book again and started reading from the second chapter. 

_Not all soulmates must be romantic. Several studies have been done to prove the existence of platonic soulmates, a connection that is not enriched by any form of physical intimacy. Some soulmates who report that they lack a physical attraction to each other but form a strong emotional bond are often called platonic soulmates, even if most of those pairs still end in some form of a long-term civil commitment that is often legally recognized as marriage._

Daniel wondered if that information would make Johnny less freaked out by the possibility of soulmates. Maybe it wasn’t the soulmates idea that bothered him so much in the first place, perhaps the issue was _him_. The idea of being soulmates with him was the problem. 

He ignored the way that stung and put the book down. 

***

Johnny stared at the book, now resting on top of his bedspread. He hadn’t read it yet – the cover alone was enough to make him feel very aware of his heartbeat in his chest. He was still caught up in the afternoon itself – he felt a pang of guilt every time he thought about it too closely, and kept trying to force it down, because somewhere, LaRusso could probably feel it too. 

LaRusso, who held very tightly to his wrist while he was helping him walk, who blinked up at him against the sunlight, both immovable and stubborn and somehow accommodating and delicate. 

He shook his head. That wasn’t helpful. 

He pulled the book onto his lap and stared at it closely, as if looking at the cover would explain what was inside. He didn’t need to read it to believe what LaRusso said – he felt that terrible emptiness that hit him when he was unconscious, the nightmarish feeling of being scraped clean inside and out and left with a gaping wound that wouldn’t heal. 

No, there was no other explanation for it. 

But accepting that LaRusso, of all people, was his soulmate – he refused to think too closely about what that word meant, about what kind of connotation it held. That meant a lifelong connection. 

What would his step-dad say? What would his mother say? His friends? Sensei Kreese? 

He remembered when he thought he was in love with Ali. How he figured he’d never feel so full of emotion again. And then Daniel LaRusso showed up and he realized that he’d never felt full at all. He was only half-full. 

He pushed the book under his pillow and laid down to sleep.


End file.
